Speaker: Larry Smith, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan

Subject: Reviving Thomas Beddoes: The Chemical and Medical Alternatives of the Late Enlightenment

Refreshments served at 3:15 p.m.

Thomas Beddoes asserted the oft disputed proposition that social and medical revision went hand in hand. Among 18th century republicans he was far from alone. While his pneumatic chemistry proved no panacea, Beddoes reflected a widespread group of chemists and medics who were intent on confronting orthodoxy at every opportunity through novel, chemical and electrical, therapies emerging from private laboratories. This seminar examines Beddoes’ extensive search, with his many supporters, for medical alternatives during the chemical revolution. In so doing, it reveals Beddoes as a highly-influential and much regarded, if politically divisive, figure by the early 19th century.